"J. van Baardwijk" wrote:
>
> At 18:08 06-06-2002 -0500, Julia Thompson wrote:
>
> >I'd like to add that maybe you should think about setting up a bookcase
> >or two for reference books likely to be needed occasionally by a number
> >of programmers (encourage them to get their own copies of books they'll
> >be using a *lot*)
>
> Why should they get their own copies and bring them to work? If an employee
> can do a better job when he has access to those books, it is in the
> company's best interest, and therefore the company should be the one
> supplying the books, not the employee.
I'm sorry. What I had in mind on that was more a "employee goes out and
gets his own copy of the book to keep in his office and gets reimbursed
by the company" sort of thing. The book that the employee is going to
need often enough not to want to have to share should be in his office.
There will be a few books that several people will want to access only
occasionally, so having those in a common area makes more sense.
Now, if the employee is going to want to take the book with him to
another job (and the average length of job in the US for a programmer
was 18 months a few years ago) then he should pay for it himself. But
part of the whole exercise was to hang on to programmers, so we hope
that won't be an issue. :)
Julia
